This is a stolen book!

OLINA, Giovanni Pietro.. Vccelliera ouero discorso della natura, e proprieta di diuersi vccelli, e in particolare di que' che cantano. Con il modo di prendergli, conoscergli, alleuargli, e mantenergli. E con le figure cauate dal vero, e diligentemente intagliate dal Tempesta, e dal Villamena. Opera di Gio. Pietro Olina novarese e dottore di legge. Dedicata al Sig. Cavalier dal Pozzo.

ROME, de Rossi., 1684

Quarto, (260x199 mm.); [5], 60 leaves, p. 61-62, l. 63-68, p. 69-77, [6] leaves. Engraved title page with Cassiano's del Pozzo coat of arms, 66 full-page engraved plates by Antonio Tempesta and Francesco Villamena, large woodcut tail-pieces and initials. One plate printed up side down, light browning and marginal foxing, overall a fine copy in XVIII century half calf, spine with gilt ornaments and red gilt lettered label.

 

Second edition, the first printed in 1622, and according to Schwerdt superior to the first, of this famous book on birds and birds hunting. The Uccelliera is a discourse on the characteristics of the many birds to be found in Italy, gives instructions on their care, and identifies their habits and songs, “45 species of birds are described and represented, together with the specific techniques for their capture and breeding: the work was a great success also for the hunting-related interest it received. It is not by chance that Olina is also considered the inventor of the bird-catching technique "a ragnaja", which is carried out by means of suitably prepared nets, following the example of spiders.” (Exhibition catalogue: Giovanni Marsigli, The library of the prefect of Padova's Botanical Garden) “The first purely ornithological work illustrated with a considerable number of engravings in the form of plates or [...] full-page figures.” (Anker, p. 13)The work is mainly concerned with the habits, trapping and management of songbirds, including the making of a special meal with almonds, chickpeas, butter and honey to feed nightingales and use of musicians to encourage their singing and improve their tonalities and musicality, but there are also descriptions and plates of hawking, trapping mechanisms and techniques and cage design.

 

Very little we know about Giovanni Pietro Olina: he was born in Orta near Novara in Piedmont in 1588, studied in Siena and then moved to Rome entering the court of Cassaino dal Pozzo. He spent the last years of his life in Novara where he died in 1645. Cassiano dal Pozzo was collector of objects of natural history. Giovanni Pietro Olina was his good friend and much of the material in the book was written by Cassiano; many of the etchings were based on watercolours made for Cassiano by Vincenzo Leonardi. “When Cassiano was inducted into the Accademia dei Lincei in 1622, he submitted a book about birds, the Uccelleria, published the same year, as proof of his scientific expertise. The author's name is given as Giovanni Pietro Olina (1585 – 1645), a lawyer friend of Cassiano, but much of it is known to have been based on material written or assembled by Cassiano himself. Furthermore the etched illustrations of birds are taken from a series of beautiful watercolour drawings commissioned by Cassiano from Vincenzo Leonardi (fl. 1621 – c.1646), one of the great masters of naturalistic illustration…” (David Freeberg, Cassiano and the art of natural history in: The paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo, London, 1993)

Schwerdt, II, 49. Souhart 356 ; Harting 278 ; Fairfax Murray, Italiani, n°1377